Abstract
Nowadays, mobile robot platforms are utilized in various fields not only for transportation but also for other diverse services such as industrial, medical and, sports, etc. Mobile robots are also an emerging application as sports field robots, where they can help serve players or even play the games. In this paper, a novel caddie robot which can autonomously follow the golfer as well as provide useful information such as golf course navigation system and weather updates, is introduced. The locomotion of the caddie robot is designed with two modes: autonomous human following mode and manual driving mode. The transition between each mode can be achieved manually or by an algorithm based on the velocity, heading angle, and inclination of the ground surface. Moreover, the transition to manual mode is activated after a caddie robot has recognized the human intention input by hand. In addition, the advanced control algorithm along with a trajectory generator for the caddie robot are developed taking into consideration the locomotion modes. Experimental results show that the proposed strategies to drive various operating modes are efficient and the robot is verified to be utilized in the golf course.
Highlights
Interaction between humans and robots has become a major component in robot technologies, in addition to conventional industrial application oriented functions such as high speed, precision, and robustness which are customized to their repetitive tasks
Notice that the information which the operation mode selection algorithm utilizes is from three components: (1) Human Intention recognition, and (2) Environment recognizer which is related to the external factors, and (3) State estimator which is related to the internal factors
It is important to note that the sampling times for the Radio Frequency (RF) signals (x and y) and the controller are different, i.e., the sampling frequency of the RF signals is by far lower (
Summary
Interaction between humans and robots has become a major component in robot technologies, in addition to conventional industrial application oriented functions such as high speed, precision, and robustness which are customized to their repetitive tasks. The question of how to effectively control and drive the caddie robot autonomously in rough terrains is not well investigated With this motivation, a commercial targeted wheel-based mobile human following caddie robot is introduced in this paper. The proposed robot has an autonomous driving mode which is subdivided into standby, aligning, and following modes, and a manual driving mode which is subdivided into stationary, constant torque, and constant velocity modes These modes enable the caddie to navigate in rough golf field terrain conditions while carrying the golf bag, since each driving mode can be switched depending on the conditions that are defined by intuitive switching parameters.
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